The Thursday Egg

I’ve noticed something that I can’t explain.

I’m a creature of routine to a certain extent. As a result of this, I generally eat just about the same thing every day. In part this is because I’m always running late in the morning and need something quickly, in part because by “standardizing” what I have every day I can have it prepared for the whole week and just grab and go as I’m heading out the door.

There’s a reason that Steve Jobs had whole closets full of the exact same black turtlenecks and jeans. He never had to spend a second thinking or making decisions about something as trivial as what to wear.

One of the things that I have almost every day is a hard-boiled egg. It’s quick, it’s relatively healthy, it’s got some protein, and in theory at least, it’s easy.

For years we’ve been on a quest to find out how to perfectly hard-boil eggs. (I could have sworn that I’ve ranted about it here, but for the life of me I couldn’t find any thing by searching for either “egg” or “boiled.”) We think we’ve got it about right.

FAQ: Put eggs in a pot with about 3 cups of water, put it on a low boil for 27 minutes. When the timer goes off, immediately pour out the boiling water and gently fill the pot with ice. This will cause the eggs to shrink while the shells stay pretty much unchanged, so the egg pulls away from the shell, making it much easier to peel the shell off. So easy that one tap and the shell just about cracks in half and falls off by itself.

Except on Thursday.

We boil six eggs on Sunday, for my breakfasts on Monday through Saturday. (Sunday morning we go out for breakfast before going grocery shopping.) The six eggs come from the same carton, they’re prepared the same way, they should by rights be about as identical as they can be.

However, I’ve noticed that almost every week, the egg I take on Thursday does NOT allow the shell to be peeled off easily. It fights every molecule of the way, the shell clinging to the white egg by shattering into pieces about five microns across, practically requiring sandpaper to get it off. The only way to eat the Thursday egg is by doing the snake thing, swallowing the entire egg whole, crushing it in our gullet, and regurgitating back up the whole and empty shell.

Why Thursday? The eggs are all the same, they’re all from the same carton, they’re all prepared the same, they’re all kept in the refrigerator the exact same way in the same bowl. What variable is at play that makes the Thursday eggs so different from the Wednesday and Friday eggs?

See, this is what your brain is reduced to thinking about after it fries (like an egg!!) from thinking about the state of our nation’s government (or lack thereof). Thanks, Trump!


Filed under Deep Thoughts, Paul

3 responses to “The Thursday Egg

  1. I’m still stunned by the 27 minutes. On the rare occasions I do boiled eggs, it’s between 5 & 7 minutes!

    Liked by 1 person

    • English water? We could do it faster at a higher temp, but doing it at a vey low boil seems to help them be much easier to peel. (Except on Thursdays, of course!)


  2. Ronnie

    Interesting. Didn’t realize Thursday’s were a challenge


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